The Booze That Came Before

In this era of "small batch" and "artisanal" and "ultrapremium," an appreciation of four stalwarts

Walk into a liquor store these days and you'll be presented with a blizzard of choices. You want a bottle of vodka. Do you want economy, premium, superpremium, or ultrapremium? Plain or flavored? If flavored, would that be citrus or blueberry or root beer or, God help us, cupcake or frosting or smoked salmon? Do you choose a national brand like Smirnoff or Skyy or Tito's, or do you go with some small brand you've never heard of? If it's one of the small ones, is it made from wheat or rye or potatoes or something weird, like milk or soy or beets?

Name any big spirits brand and most likely it will come adorned with upgrades and extensions and premixed cocktails and any other thing you can think of, as if it were so much Gatorade. Or you can go artisanal and get a locally produced version of the same spirit. You'll pay twice the price, but they'll throw in a cleverly designed bottle.

It wasn't always thus. In 1979, I reached the legal drinking age of 18 and moved to New York City to go to college. That meant beer, of course, but New York has always been a hard-liquor town, and my friends and I drank a lot of that, too. When finances allowed, we'd invest an extra dollar or three on a better bottle. Things such as Jack Daniel's (then sold at 90 proof), Beefeater gin rather than Fleischmann's, genuine Soviet Stolichnaya (then just about the only imported vodka there was) for chilled shots and kamikazes (not one I drink anymore), Sauza Tres Generaciones for the tequila-lime-salt ritual. Occasionally there was even a bottle of single-malt Scotch. (The choices were Glenlivet, Laphroaig, or Glenfiddich.)

Back then, any vodka you found would taste of alcohol and water, not ginger-whortleberry, Cheetos, or baby food. As for artisanal spirits, there was Maker's Mark. Microdistilleries? There were none. Brands tended to focus on their main expression and to cling stubbornly to it. Navigating a liquor-store shelf wasn't a major research project.

Liquor companies have cut loose a lot of formerly reliable go-to brands in favor of "innovation," lowering their proofs and aging periods, changing their formulas, taking shortcuts in production, and generally letting them drift to the bottom. Some stalwart brands, however, have weathered the storm, maintaining standards and resisting change (with respect to their core products, anyway) as the world moves around them. Here are four I've been drinking since I was old enough to pass an ID check, brands I can be sure of finding in just about any liquor store in the country, bottles I like as much or more than their premium offshoots: Absolut 100, Tanqueray No. Ten, Wild Turkey Rare Breed, Courvoisier XO. These humble bottles are four of the best bottles of liquor in the country. No improvements necessary.

[1] Absolut vodka ($20). Absolut's core expression — the plain-old 80-proof Absolut — is as stable as granite, probably because every drop has always been made from winter wheat, yeast, and artesian water in one distillery in southern Sweden. Impeccably clean and slightly yeasty. Perfect.

[2] Tanqueray gin ($20). It's what real gin tastes like: piney, a little bit sweet (but not sugary or in any way cloying), and slightly lemony, with a bracing whiff of clean alcohol to remind you it's bottled at the traditional 94.6 proof. The martini gin of all martini gins.

[3] Wild Turkey 101 bourbon ($20). Okay, back in 1979, the bottle had a big red "8" on it for the number of years this classic premium bourbon had been aged. Now the eight-year costs extra. But if the 101 is younger, it isn't by much — the whiskey is still big and warming, not hiding its high proof but still smooth and rich and just what you want in an old-fashioned.

[4] Courvoisier VSOP ($35). Fresh and appealing. Just put it in a glass and drink it.

WHAT DAVE'S DRINKING

OLD OVERHOLT ($14)

"Old Overcoat" (as it was once affectionately known) used to be bottled at 100 proof. Nowadays it's 80 proof. But it's still a surprisingly rich, spicy whiskey that rings a little Pavlovian "shots" bell in my brain whenever I catch a whiff of it. Plus, it may just be the oldest brand of whiskey in America.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.